CEI wins FOIA tiff with NASA via judicial order

A climate change denial group once funded by oil giant ExxonMobil (2012 revenues: $453.123 billion) won a legal victory last week over NASA when a federal judge ordered the space agency to turn over more documents related to its 2007 revisions of global temperature data. Release of the information will have no effect on the climate change data that scientists are using to determine the extent of global warming that is occurring.

The controversy started in August 2007, when statistician Stephen McIntyre found an error in NASA’s temperature data sets that he said caused temperatures in the U.S. from the year 2000 onward to be overstated. After posting “his findings on his website ClimateAudit.org,” according to Judge Barbara Rothstein’s decision, McIntyre “emailed them to NASA climate scientists” at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), which quickly “revised values in its temperature data set…[and] did not issue a press release announcing or explaining the corrections.”

Sensing a potential scandal, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) submitted three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to NASA, two in August 2007 and one in January 2008. After NASA released 2,500 pages of data in response, CEI filed a FOIA lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia in 2010.

Among the materials NASA withheld were two electronic directories referred to as the “Steve” and “alternate cleaning” directories, media inquiries about the data corrections, and two email accounts of Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA scientist who teaches at Columbia University and contributes to a blog called RealClimate.org. Although CEI wanted all that and more, Judge Rothstein ordered NASA to release only the “Steve” directory and one of Dr. Schmidt’s email accounts, finding that the other materials either held no responsive documents or fell within a valid FOIA exemption.

49 thoughts on “CEI wins FOIA tiff with NASA via judicial order”

I like the gratuitous association of CEI, the climate denial group with funding from ExxonMobile and making it almostnsound like they were getting $453 billion/year. I bet CEI doesn’t deny there is a climate.

Not a fan of this. Nor a fan of the idea that we need to go to court to get what should be publicly accessible in a functioning democracy of any sort. It’ll be interesting if anything curious shows up, and curious if anything interesting appears.

They can lie and ran all the want, and if it takes a court order to let those guys know they will be held responsible then I’m all for court orders every time. And I don’t care if its funded by the “alleged” oil companies – what is important is forcing these guys to look over their shoulder ever time they lie. About time in my book. They (the agw side) certainly have been playing by their own rules long enough.

Green Energy Futures – Found 1 October 2013
“Green Energy Futures is a project and a journey that seeks to share the stories of green energy pioneers who are doing incredible things just below the radar of the conventional media.” Gold Sponsors: TD, Shell
Source:http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/52-sun-country-highway

America’s WETLAND Foundation – Found 1 October 2013
“The America’s WETLAND Foundation is supported by a variety of organizations, foundations and corporations that want to elevate issues facing the Gulf Coast…We would like to especially thank our lead “World Sponsor,” Shell, for their early and generous support of the Foundation….”
Sustainability Sponsors: Chevron – ConocoPhillips Company [crude oil & natural gas]
National Sponsors: American Petroleum Institutue
Source:http://www.americaswetland.com/custompage.cfm?pageid=252

Climate Research Unit (CRU)
“From the late 1970s through to the collapse of oil prices in the late 1980s, CRU received a series of contracts from BP to provide data and advice….we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders….British Petroleum,…Shell,…Sultanate of Oman…”
Source: cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/history

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“Exxon-Led Group Is Giving A Climate Grant to Stanford”
Four big international companies, including the oil giant Exxon Mobil, said yesterday that they would give Stanford University $225 million over 10 years….In 2000, Ford and Exxon Mobil’s global rival, BP, gave $20 million to Princeton to start a similar climate and energy research program…”
Source: New York Times – 21 November 2002

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Sierra Club
“TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking…”
Source: Time – 2 February 2012

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Nature Conservancy
“…The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years. “Oh, wow,” De Leon said when told of the depth of the relationship between the nonprofit group she loves and the company she hates. “That’s kind of disturbing.”……Conservation International has accepted $2 million in donations from BP over the years…”
Source: Washington Post – 25 May 2010

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Delhi Sustainable Development Summit
In 2003 and 2004 Rajendra Pachauri’s annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit was sponsored, among others, by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. and the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. In 2005 Shell gave money and in 2006 and 2007 BP gave money. The Rockefeller Foundation gave donations in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Source: dsds.teriin.org [See their About Us – Archives]

UC Berkeley – 1 February 2007
“BP selects UC Berkeley to lead $500 million energy research consortium with partners Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, University of Illinois…”
Source: UK Berkely News

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Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project
“Financial Support – Berkeley Earth is now an independent non profit. Berkeley Earth received a total of $623,087 in financial support for the first phase of work,…..First Phase
…….Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates) ($100,000) Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000)……”
Source: berkeleyearth.org/donors

On 20 April 2002 Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri was elected Chairman of the IPCC.

In 2005 Pachauri set up a residual oil extraction technology company called Glorioil. It advised and gave technical assistance to big oil companies on extracting residual oil from fields which would otherwise have been abandoned.
Glorioil (now Glori Energy based in Houston, Texas)

Not sure, but I believe the data held by NASA is public. However the data held by its Partners is not, so you’d have to submit requests to Columbia University or GISS – likely the reason for the rejection by the judge, and also wouldn’t be honored.

A climate change denial group once funded by oil giant ExxonMobil (2012 revenues: $453.123 billion) won a legal victory last week over NASA when a federal judge ordered the space agency to turn over more documents related to its 2007 revisions of global temperature data. Release of the information will have no effect on the climate change data that scientists are using to determine the extent of global warming that is occurring.

Why should the publicly funded NASA handing over data be a problem? No effect on data? Where is the former NASA employee and climate change activist Dr. James Hansen who has been arrested at least two times over his climate activism? It’s all for the grand kiddies. Only Hansen has grand children.

When I get smeared my friends I fight fire with fire. It’s the only sensible thing to do. Did I hear Exxon? Have I heard tobacco before? Of course I did so here we go again!
The BBC Pension fund, as at 31 March 2013, had investments in the following tobacco companies:
Altria Group
British American Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco
Reynolds American

—Al Gore, the climate change campaigner, has been quoted in 1996 by the New York Times saying:

“Throughout most of my life, I’ve raised tobacco,”……..”I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve chopped it. I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.”

Earlier in the same article the New York Times said:

“Six years after Vice President Al Gore’s older sister died of lung cancer in 1984, he was still accepting campaign contributions from tobacco interests. Four years after she died, while campaigning for President in North Carolina, he boasted of his experiences in the tobacco fields and curing barns of his native Tennessee….”

—
In 2007 the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report called “ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science”.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has in the past received funding from the Grantham Foundation, which is bankrolled by hedge-fund manager Jeremy Grantham. At the time of the funding the foundation had holdings in tobacco giant Philip Morris. In August of 2011 his fund owned millions of shares in fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil.
—
One of the founders of the wildlife and climate campaigning WWF is Dr. Anton Rupert. The now deceased Dr. Rupert made his fortune from the cigarette manufacturing company called Voorbrand, re-named Rembrandt, now consolidated into Rothmans.
Ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1508360/Anton-Rupert.html

“British American Tobacco Biodiversity Partnership: Fauna & Flora International, the Tropical Biology Association and Earthwatch Institute. Through the Partnership, we are involved in more than 30 biodiversity projects worldwide.

I am in the process of trying to do a little climate educating. Currently our discussion is around Hansen’s nuclear energy embrace. Does anyone know if he has any documented ties with the industry? I have just started searching but thought I would ask here, too. :-)

Here is the Climate Audit post about Hansen’s readjustment of the adjusted temperatures, (which was later followed by a later re-readjustment.) This was the wake-up call for me. Up until this point I had many doubts, but was “undecided.” After this point I became the black sheep of my family, as I became intensely skeptical, was angry at Hansen, and even used rude words like “Fraud.”

Enough is enough! Urge your Senators and Representatives to pass legislation requiring all data and email funded by public tax dollars to be made publicly available (state secrets being the exception). The penalty for failing to provide such data and email needs to be mandatory and immediate jail time in a Federal Prison. Mann and Schmidt (and whole bunch of others) deserve jail time for repeatedly refusing to provide taxpayer funded data and correspondence to those who paid for it.

How do you sleep at night? Do solar panels on your home really block satellite heat sinking devices?

NSA and President Obama must be moderating everything you do.

If not for people like you, we would all become government servants.

Keep up the great reporting Anthony,and hope I did not scare you, I am scared just being a realist(they call me a denier) and feel I may be on some sort of deportation list even though I was born in the USA including my parent and their parents. Go back a little further and my Great Great grandmother was True blood American Indian.

Isn’t CEI a free market think tank? The article tries to make it look like all CEI does is deny climate change while sucking up the profits of big oil. Wouldn’t it be nice to just once hear of profits in percentages from these left wing propogandists? “ohhhh, look at the shiney big numbers”

When I get smeared my friends I fight fire with fire…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Great lists. Thanks
The general public does not understand science much less physics and you get absolutely no where if you try to use science to counter emotional thinking and faith in what IPCC psuedo-scientists say. (After all YOU don’t have a PhD in Climate science and besides you are a Din!er.)

However the public does understand hypocrisy. Add to your lists Enron and BP invented the Global Warming Industry and Shell Oil funded the founding of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia and watch the light bulbs go on. This is the main reason the Warmists keep smearing skeptics with the ‘Big Oil’ brush and why ‘Big Oil’ occasionally tosses crumbs at skeptics that soon after show up as headlines in articles written by Greenpeace and the MSM.

Enron bought, on the cheap of course, the world’s largest windmill company (now GE Wind) and the world’s second-largest solar panel interest (now BP) to join Enron’s natural gas pipeline network, which was the second largest in the world. The former two can only make money under a system of massive mandates and subsidies (and taxes to pay for them); the latter would prosper spectacularly if the war on coal succeeded.

(Natural gas is the only viable energy source of the three. So follow natural gas.)

There is also the Ged Davis, VP of Shell Oil, e-mail on IPCC storylines and Scenerios:

4.2 Scenarios

4.21 Energy Resources/Technology
Energy efficiency innovations, and successful institutional innovations
disseminating their use, result in much lower levels of energy use relative
to historic patterns….
1. Widespread expansion of natural gas, with a growing role for renewable
energy (scenario B1N)….
2. A more rapid development of renewables, replacing coal and oil; the bulk of the remaining energy coming from natural gas (scenario B1R).

Obama’s war on coal hits your electric bill
The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt…. These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level….

So as coal plants are closed the cost of energy will go up by a factor of 10 or more. That is your $200/month bill becomes $2000 a month. This depends on how much is from the much more costly solar and wind energy. See R. Courtney’s comment HERE

This does not include the cost of the Smart Meters and Smart appliances needed to turn off your electric so power companies can be supply continuous power to government and corporations. (You get the rolling blackouts not them.)

The objective of the treaty is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. The treaty itself set no limits on emissions and contains no enforcement mechanisms. This explains the positions of the DOE and EPA on CAGW. Their job now is to change public opinion so those limits can be set and enforcement mechanisms can be put in place. Make you wonder just who the DOE and EPA actually are working for doesn’t it? (The USDA and FDA did the same sort of propaganda footwork for the UN and WTO to make sure that US law is now written to comply with the WTO, OIE and FAO standards.)

The Kyoto Protocol is part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and was signed but was not ratified by the USA.

A special report on selected side events at UNFCCC SB-12
Published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in cooperation with the UNFCCC Secretariat (June 2000)

At the launch of its Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), the IPCC announced that circumstances since the 1992 Report (IS92) have changed dramatically. The SRES team was lead by Nebojša Nakićenović, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, who also presented the findings. Also present were Prof. Emilio Lebre La Rovere, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and member of the IPCC, and Ged Davis, Shell International.

The event was chaired by Bert Metz, Co-chair of IPCC Working Group III. Davis stressed the difficulty of predicting what may happen in the next 100 years and noted that today’s circumstances may not provide reliable guidance for future projections. He outlined different energy and carbon scenarios, with variations in population growth, technological change, levels of convergence between poor and rich, and market-based solutions. He stressed that no probabilities can be assigned to each of the total of 40 scenarios.
….

Title: Article 6: Education, Training and Public Awareness: Learning from National and International Experience
Sponsor: UNFCCC
Internet: http://www.unfccc.int
Hanna Hoffmann, UNFCCC, presented an overview of FCCC Article 6 (education, training, public awareness)*. She noted that while the Article has received increased recognition much remains to be done to bring it into operation. Peter O. Odhengo, Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI), Paul Stolpman, United States Environmental Protection Agency, and Ep Booneman, Ministry of Environment, Netherlands, made presentations on their national experiences with implementation of Article 6. Odhengo reported on many difficulties in disseminating information and building awareness in Kenya, particularly in rural areas….

In this special event representatives from the World Bank and the Colombian Ministry of the Environment outlined the World Bank/Donor Countries Programme of National CDM/JI Strategy Studies, and presented the results of the National Strategy Study for Implementation of
the CDM in Colombia. Peter Kalas (World Bank) provided an overview of the World Bank National Strategy Study (NSS), the objective of which is to advance climate change programmes in host countries, with a particular focus on implementation of the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. The programme aims to build institutions, develop appropriate legal and economic frameworks, and provide host countries with resources and technical guidance.

Article 6 of the Convention
1st Dialogue on Article 6 of the Convention

Reaffirming the importance of climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information and international cooperation on these matters for achieving the ultimate objective of the Convention and for the effective implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions, COP 18 adopted the Doha work programme on Article 6 of the Convention and requested the SBI to organize an annual in-session Dialogue on Article 6 of the Convention to enhance work in this area….

You’re getting tangled up on cui bono and cui bozo. Cui bono, ‘who benefits’ is a well known fallacy….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
HUH? Cui bono is a well known investigative technique. The police use it all the time.

cui bozo of course refers to those who benefit from the ‘Useful Idiots’

Let’s see.. CEI is associated with Exxon-Mobil with revenues of $435 Billion, vs NASA an organization funded by the US Federal Government with revenues of $2.7 Trillion. Exxon-Mobil sells products that help people, the US Federal Government taxes people (business don’t really pay taxes, they raise the price of their products to pay the taxes) and subsidizes those who they like.

Gail Combs says November 11, 2013 at 3:56 am
…
This does not include the cost of the Smart Meters and Smart appliances needed to turn off your electric so power companies can be supply continuous power to government and corporations. (You get the rolling blackouts not them.)

Conflating ‘rolling blackouts’ with selective control of appliances (e.g. set points of air conditioners, delaying the start of water-heaters during high peak-load periods)?

The broad-brush you paint with does your accuracy ‘factor’ no favors, Gail. Or maybe this will be just more claimed ‘editing’ failure? More apropos to cite the trade-marked hair-on-fire posting style …

Industry and select customers who agree to ‘shed loads’ at the behest of the electric utility during high demands periods are ALREADY a reality. This is a logical extension into another part of the electric market that, so far, does nothing to control loads on the DEMAND side of the equation (excepting forced, total-cutoff BLACKOUTS).

Gail Combs says November 11, 2013 at 3:56 am
…
This does not include the cost of the Smart Meters and Smart appliances needed to turn off your electric so power companies can be supply continuous power to government and corporations. (You get the rolling blackouts not them.)

Conflating ‘rolling blackouts’ with selective control of appliances (e.g. set points of air conditioners, delaying the start of water-heaters during high peak-load periods)?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No I Am Not.
(Note Smart Meters is first in that sentence.)

….Rolling outages are systematic, temporary interruptions of electrical service.
They are the last step in a progressive series of emergency procedures[They turn off your Smart Appliances first] that ERCOT follows when it detects that there is a shortage of power generation within the Texas electric grid. ERCOT will direct electric transmission and distribution utilities, such as CenterPoint Energy, to begin controlled, rolling outages to bring the supply and demand for electricity back into balance.They generally last 15-45 minutes before being rotated to a different neighborhood to spread the effect of the outage among consumers,[/b] which would be the case whether outages are coordinated at the circuit level or individual meter level. Without this safety valve, power generating units could overload and begin shutting down and risk causing a domino effect of a statewide, lengthy outage. With smart meters, CenterPoint Energy is proposing to add a process prior to shutting down whole circuits to conduct a mass turn off of individual meters with 200 amps or less (i.e. residential and small commercial consumers) for 15 or 30 minutes, rotating consumers impacted during that outage as well as possible future outages.

There are several benefits to consumers of this proposed process. By isolating non-critical service accounts (“critical” accounts include hospitals, police stations, water treatment facilities etc.) and spreading “load shed” to a wider distribution, critical accounts that happen to share the same circuit with non-critical accounts will be less affected in the event of an emergency. Curtailment of other important public safety devices and services such as traffic signals, police and fire stations, and water pumps and sewer lifts may also be avoided.….

Gail Combs says November 11, 2013 at 3:56 am
… This does not include the cost of the Smart Meters and Smart appliances needed to turn off your electric so power companies can be supply continuous power to government and corporations. (You get the rolling blackouts not them.)

_Jim November 11, 2013 at 6:00 am
Conflating ‘rolling blackouts’ with selective control of appliances (e.g. set points of air conditioners, delaying the start of water-heaters during high peak-load periods)?

Gail Combs November 11, 2013 at 7:03 am:
No I Am Not.
(Note Smart Meters is first in that sentence.)

Perhaps I should give you more leeway as your native language may not be English?

I am still not able parse “This does not include the cost of the Smart Meters and Smart appliances needed to turn off your electric so power companies can be supply continuous power to government and corporations.” as you do, de-coupling ‘smart meters’ and ‘turning off your electric [power]’ for the convenience and sake of govt and corporations.

I am beginning to think you do not comprehend half the subjects on which you post (and aside from your own posts now given the above!) leading me to believe Gail’s a ‘cut and paste’ artiste extraordinaire with a hair-on-fire posting style unmatched by any on WUWT.

Hopefully you do not actually fall into the category of Humpty Dumpty wherein: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

In your post addressed to Gail Combes at November 11, 2013 at 8:25 am you say

I am beginning to think you do not comprehend half the subjects on which you post (and aside from your own posts now given the above!) leading me to believe Gail’s a ‘cut and paste’ artiste extraordinaire with a hair-on-fire posting style unmatched by any on WUWT.

I will try to help you.

It is clear that you are only “beginning to think” and that more thinking before posting would benefit you. The problem is your obvious lack of ability at reading comprehension.

When Ms Combes quotes someone verbatim then either
(a) they intended what they wrote
or
(b) they made a mistake
or
(c) Ms Combes quoted them out of context.

In the cases you challenge you do not claim Ms Combes quoted them out of context and she did not.

If you don’t like the information she provides then that is your problem and not hers. So, either provide referenced refutation of the referenced information she provides or accept that there is information you don’t like. In either case, stop whinging at her about it because it makes you look like the answer to cui bozo.

Let us say you had evidenced a local hospital was going fall down which would result in many deaths . Let us say that the authorities refuse to do anything until you show them all your proof. Do you A, refuse saying ‘it’s my data and you can’t have it’ or B throw the lot in their face and keep throwing until they do something?

In the case of AGW we are told that it’s the ‘most important event ever ‘ and that there is ‘no time to lose ‘ and that ‘the science is settled . And yet what do we see but ‘ it’s my data and you can’t have it’ and the liberal application of smoke and mirrors. When surely what is called for it the first approach were much effort is put into making all the data available , indeed forcefully shoving into people’s faces. Therefore, you can see why people get a distinct hint of BS about ‘the cause’

Meanwhile it is not a little ironic that even if the alarmists are right it is their own inability to share the data honestly that is partly reasonable for holding back action on this front and so ‘dooming the planet’

Allgov.com is the brainchild of David Wallechinsky, I believe, who produced the best-selling “Book of Lists” and “The People’s Almanac” in the ’70s. At the time, I thought he was pretty right on. (I don’t see his name associated with AllGov now, but it appears there are several of his kids on the staff.) AllGov is the FIRST site EVER to censor a post of mine — with regard to the CEI story, I questioned their apparent objection to transparency in government.